I have arrived in Taiwan!

First off, thanks to everyone for the good wishes! ^_^

Second, my apologies. I forgot to bring my camera cords, so my pictures are stuck on my camera -_- and Maggie's camera and computer are not playing nice, so her pictures are also unavailable. I am sorry.

Third, my words. After flying in, I met my host family. Maggie is my host mama, Mr. Lee  (he doesn't have an American name, so this is my attempt to give him one you can understand) is my host papa, and Nicole is my little host sister. We went to the night market last night, and loved it. I tried lots of new foods, and enjoyed them all. Then, this morning, we went to the National Center of Traditional Arts, which was a wonderful place full of, you guessed it, traditional arts. These included glassblowing, wooden-shoe-making, and bamboo crafts. We enjoyed looking at this art while munching on cotton candy and candied fruits (I found out that candied tomato still tastes like tomato when you bite into it...) I got a glitter-painting done on my arm. It is a blue, green, and purple eye design. After the Center, we continued on our way to Hualien City. We stopped at a beach along the way. Instead of sand, it was entirely rock, smooth stones of various sizes, from pebbles to about 3 inches in diameter. It was beautiful, but I had some trouble taking pictures because the humid air kept condensing on my camera lens. Finally, we made it to Hualien. A group of Rotary members greeted me, then we came to the house. I got unpacked, then took a nap. We went out for dinner, since we hadn't had time to go to the market. We went to a Japanese restaurant, and got a table on the 3rd floor. All the buildings here go up instead of out. The mark of a wealthy person here is a wide house, not a tall one.

That should do for today. I'll try to get pictures on here next time!